"Name"

Rev. Matthew Miller

FROM THE LAW Exodus 3:1-15 click here to watch the sermon “Name”

Names matter. What someone, or something is called is a critical part of shaping their identity. Some of you have noticed that when I take the stage around town I use the shortened version of my name. I do it in part to distinguish between my avocation on stage and my vocation as pastor. 

Think about your own name, what people have called you all your life, and how it affects the way you think about yourself. One of the most interesting moments for me at a wedding comes at the end- after the ceremony is over and the guests have filed out of the church. The last thing that a bride and groom do before heading out the door on their way to the reception is to sign the marriage license. It’s fairly standard for everyone involved- the pastor, the witnesses, even the groom. More often than not, the bride is taking a new name that she has to sign. Sometimes she’s practiced it, sometimes she hasn’t. But it’s at that moment- not when she’s making her vow, or exchanging rings, or even in the kiss- it’s at that moment when she’s signing her new name legally for the first time that it dawns on her that this is real and that something has changed. Names matter. 

They certainly matter to the people we meet in the Bible. At the beginning of Genesis, the name of the first person is Adam, which comes from the Hebrew word for ground, because the bible says that God made Adam from the dust of the earth. This is what we remember on Ash Wednesday when we mark ourselves with ashes and hear that we too are dust, and that it is to dust that we will one day return. Later in Genesis, we meet Abram- a name that means exalted father, which is a kind of cruel irony because for most of his life Abram is nobody’s father. But then God calls him and sends him and promises to bless him. One of the things that God does to assure Abram of this promise is to change his name. God tells him that his offspring will become a multitude of nations, and so God changes his name to mean “father of multitude,” or Abraham. Then God tells Abraham that his wife is going to have a baby, which is an absurd thing to say because the two of them older than dirt at this point. In fact, it’s so absurd that Sarah laughs when she hears it. So, when the baby is born, they name him son of laughter- or Isaac. Isaac and his wife have twins, the second of whom is born with a hand on this older brother’s heel. So, that’s what they name him, heel, or Jacob. But when Jacob encounters God, and an epic wrestling match ensues on the banks of the Jabbock River, he is given a new name, Israel, which means to struggle with God.  

This morning we find ourselves out in the wilderness with a man named Moses. This is the boy who was saved from the Egyptian Pharaoh’s death sentence when, as a baby, his family sent him down the Nile River in a basket. Pharaoh’s daughter found him along the bank of the river and drew him out of the water, so she gave him the name Moses-which means “drawn out.” The names of the people we meet in the bible tell us something about who they are and how their lives are changed by encountering God. Names matter. 

So, how did this Moses go from being the adopted son of the Pharaoh’s daughter, a child of royal privilege to the shepherd of another man’s flock out in the wilderness? Certainly, if you would have asked young Moses at 17, or 18, he would NOT have told you that this is where he saw himself in twenty, or thirty years- tending someone else’s sheep out in the desert. What happened? Well, life happened. It’s like John Lennon once said, “life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” Life happened to Moses. Life, and murder. Let’s not forget the murder. One day, prince Moses sees an Egyptian taskmaster beating one of the Hebrew slaves. Even though he’s been raised in the palace, he knows the Hebrews are his people. He’s enraged. He kills the Egyptian and hides the body in the sand before anyone can see what he’s done. But somehow word gets out and Moses high tails it out of town. He puts the past behind him and tries to start over. He meets a girl, gets married, goes to work for her father, and the years pass. Just when it looks like this is how he’s going to live out the rest of his days, something extraordinary happens. God, rather dramatically, interrupts Moses’ regularly scheduled program. He sees a bush ablaze that doesn’t burn up and it catches his attention. You think? But then the text says something curious. It saw that when the Lord saw that Moses turned aside to see, God called out to him. Think about that for a second. God wanted to get Moses’ attention, was waiting to see if Moses noticed. Which makes me wonder, what if he hadn’t? What if Moses had dismissed the bush as a trick of the eyes, or evidence that he’d been out in the sun too long? Or what if he’d been distracted, “Is that bush on fire- wait, what’s that little lambe doing over there. Just a minute.” And off he went. 

The poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning in her poem from Aurora Leigh writes, “Earth’s crammed with heaven, and every common bush afire with God; But only he who sees takes off his shoes, the rest sit around and pick blackberries, and daub their faces unaware.” Only nowadays that might read, the rest sit round and look at their phones, and you can see in their faces that they are unaware. Far too often, in our efforts to be reasonable, or simply in the everyday distraction of trying to get on with our regularly scheduled programming, we miss God setting the world around us ablaze with holiness. 

Of course, the other possibility is that we know this story. We know what happens when people turn aside from life as they’ve always known it, the way things have always been, and start paying closer attention to God’s presence. It isn’t all rainbows and butterflies. It changes everything. So, we conveniently refuse to see this thing that will very likely mean a whole new direction for our lives because we like what we already know. We like things the way that they are. God, however, does not.  Which is why God goes to all this trouble to get Moses’ attention in the first place. God isn’t really interested in Moses’ qualifications for the job he’s about to be handed. There isn’t time for all that, and anyway, Moses doesn’t have any. He is a murderer and a fugitive. But God has seen and heard the cries of God’s people. God knows what they are suffering and is ready to do something about it. Moses is just the man for the job. Why? Because he turn to aside to see something beyond himself, to see more that what his life had become. By the way, that is the only qualification needed for the adventure of your life. That is all that takes to have your life commandeered by God for purposes far great than yourself. So Moses gets his orders. “I’m sending you back to Pharaoh to bring my people out of Egypt.” That’s a pretty tall order. Maybe Moses was thinking, “couldn’t I just put some money in the plate and call it a day?” But what he say is what all say when God taps us on the shoulder and calls us to do something more than we think we can do. He said, “who am I? Who am I to do this impossible thing,” but more to the point, “who are you?” Who exactly am I supposed to say sent me when I go back to these people I barely know and tell them I’ve been sent to set them free? What’s you name. Because names matter. Well, the voice from the bust comes back and says simply, “I AM WHO I AM.” The word itself in Hebrew is a form of the verb ‘to be’ so that this name God give can alternately be rendered, “I am what I am,” or, “I will be what I will be.” You might even go so far as to translate it, “I will case to be what I will cause to be.” However you phrase it, the point is that this is no tribal deity we’re dealing with, this is not somebody else’s idea of a God. This is the name of the one through whom all that was, all that is, and all that ever will be comes into existence. This is the God who sets the world ablaze, who hears, and sees, and knows, and plans to do something about the cries of those who suffer. This is a God who enlists murderers and fugitives and all other kinds of questionable people who on their own are nothing more than dust into this rescue effort. This God simply is. This God is- the source of all being, and wants nothing more that to get our attention, because there are still people crying out, there are still people who need to be set free from all kinds of slavery, there are still plenty of Pharaoh’s in this world to stand up to who live and rule and prosper on the backs of those who suffer and cry out. The only question is, “are there still people who will turn aside to see what God would show them?” Will we recognize the holiness of such a thing when we see it? I think it’s only fair to warn you, that if you do, your life will never be the same again.